User:Mary Courtney Artist

The Irish Award Winning Poet & Artist Mary Courtney from Earlsdon Coventry was struck down with chronic fatigue syndrome or as it is better known M.E. three years ago.

After winning a series of commendations for her poems published by Cambridge and Warwick University & the National Poetry Society she has created an art exhibition combining her love of poetry and painting featuring 8 Haiku’s called ‘A Story of Energy’ which tells the story of her ongoing recovery from M.E.

Mary tells the story about the much misunderstood energy sapping illness through 8 paintings, poems and audio files entitled Dragging, Dragon, Cake, Energy, Apple, Gathering, Ravenous & Twirls. The audio files explain where the inspiration for the paintings and poems comes from.

The former intensive care nurse, university medical health studies lecturer, dancer and competing Tri-athlete found over a 7 day period a collection of 47 fully formed poems came flooding out of her hand into a note book she kept by her bedside. Inspired by an article she read about American balloon expert Jonathan Trappe attaching giant helium balloons to his office chair and flying away she entered a poem called ‘Feeling Trapped’ in The National Poetry competition and received the lift of her life when she received a commendation at the first time of entering.

A second in a prestigious worldwide Cambridge University poetry competition followed and last year two poems about her experiences as a nurse on the Nightingale Ward received double commendations in Warwick University’s first international medical poetry prize, the Hippocrates Prize Mary said “As quickly as the poems started, they stopped, I was then encouraged to take up painting, the difference between the poems and the paintings were the poems were fully formed in my head almost like they wrote themselves whilst I slept whereas with the painting I had a thought, started with a blank piece of canvas and my mood and energy determined how the painting ended..

Like her painting Gathering which depicts thumb prints coming together to push someone up a hill Mary attributes the exhibition happening because of her friends gathering around her, “the amount of help I have received from my friends has overwhelmed me, this exhibition would not be possible without the help of my friends Pam Drower, Anna-Marie Keane, Jim Sheridan, Helen Talty, Eleanor Murphy, Paul Curtis and the expertise of Kevin Vaughan of Lens Art and Patrick Kelly of Friswells Art Gallery, the funding provided by Eamonn Harron of The Coventry & District Charitable Trust (The old Hospital Saturday Fund) and David Nuttall of Coventry City Councils small arts grant turned it from a dream into reality. It was Anna Marie Keane who found out about the councils art fund, she filled in all the forms for me, when the funding wasn't enough for the framing she approached The Coventry & District Charitable Trust to make up the difference and all I had to do was come up with a title for the project, When I had no energy my friends used theirs and without them, "A Story of Energy" would not be happening." Because the exhibition is all about energy and how it is constantly moving plans are in place for the exhibition to be installed at the George Elliott Hospitals Chronic Fatigue Unit where Mary’s consultant Dr Vinod Patel has show particular interest in Mary’s story and Warwick University Medical School before going on a tour to Manchester/Dublin/Berlin/Oslo/Dubai/Hong Kong/China/Japan/Australia & America before returning to London in time for the Olympic Games in June 2012

Mary said, “It feels like returning to my childhood, I am doing what I loved at school – writing poems and painting, for people to be interested in my story of M.E, how it made me feel for months and over time how I find my release from this much misunderstood illness. I hope people seeing my paintings and hearing my poems raise the profile of M.E. research and by talking about it the organisations can invest more time and energy into understanding what triggers it and how recovery to some level of energy can be achieved”

The original 8 paintings of ‘The Story of Energy’ will be launched at Friswells Art Gallery, 223 Albany Road, Earlsdon, Coventry. CV5 6NF on Thursday 7th April at 11.45a.m.where they can be viewed until April 30th, a limited edition set of artist approved prints can be purchased via the gallery.

MARY COURTNEY BIOGRAPHY www.marycourtneypoetry.co.uk

Mary Courtney is the oldest of six children – four boys, two girls – born to Irish parents Nicholas Courtney and Theresa McMahon in Earlsdon, Coventry.

Her father from Kerry, a building labourer and her mum Theresa from Clouncuneen near Carrigaholt, County Clare, was a full-time mother.

She studied English at A level but wished to be a nurse, after training in Sheffield she later moved to London, where she worked in intensive care at St Bartholomew’s Hospital before she moved back to Coventry to help her brothers and sister care for their father who had cancer.

After nursing, Mary worked as a lecturer in Medical Sociology at Northampton University and ran a university access course for students at North Warwickshire and Hinckley College helping students get into Cambridge and Oxford. Mary receives emails from former student all over the World. She also studied for an MA at Warwick University in health care research.

Three years ago at the age of 45, Mary was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome or ME. “I was working and leading a full, active social life. I used to do Irish dancing and salsa three nights a week – Poetry gives me a great buzz. You can make the words dance on the page, but it’s not the same. You can be on form for an hour, if you sleep up to it. “My consultant says there are no experts on ME.”

Last year not only was Mary a commended winner in the National Poetry Competition – for “Feeling Trapped (A True Story)” she came second in a poetry competition organised by The Haddon Library of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge University.

Poems had to be inspired by the numbers 800, 1209 and/or 2009 to celebrate the University’s 800th anniversary – Mary’s was called The Story of 800.

At the award ceremony Mary recited a poem about her mother’s sister, Mary, called I was Born.

She said: “I come from an oral tradition. My father loved singing – he loved bringing people to tears. “Last summer my aunt Mary came over from Ireland to visit me. We sat in the kitchen and I asked her to tell me her life story. She started off ‘I was born the 6th of June 1923, in the heart of Clouncuneen’ – it was great! She was one of triplets, her mother then had two sets of twins and four singles.

As a result Mary has been contacted by members of the family from America, Australia and London, even a long lost friend of her late mother, Nora Mahoney Pace now 80 and living in San Diego. “Nora sent this email it said ‘My dearest Mary I was with your mother Theresa McMahon on the USS Washington arriving in New York on June 12, 1952’. “My mother was 17 when she moved to America and Nora was 20. She hadn’t seen my mother since that time. “Nora had read an article in the County Clare Champion about me reading a poem about my aunt Mary at Cambridge University.”

Mary’s favorite poets include: Irish poet and Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney. New York born Irish poet and musician Micheal Donaghy and the first woman poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy

MARY COURTNEY IN THE PRESS Mary has appeared in The Irish Post, The Clare Champion & the Coventry Telegraph The Irish Post http://www.marycourtneypoetry.co.uk/irishpost_june09.pdf

The Clare Champion http://www.clarechampion.ie/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=353:marys-words-ring-out-in-the-hallowed-halls-of-cambridge&catid=76:history&Itemid=55

The Coventry Telegraph http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/lifestyle-news/your-life/2010/04/07/from-nurse-to-verse-92746-26190644/3/#ixzz1DfDwWyeQ http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/lifestyle-news/your-life/2009/03/25/the-coventry-woman-who-is-defying-me-to-write-poetry-92746-23222333/